eBid Marketing Challenge!!

[*artsbanquet*]

This is what Gazza said in his post:



I see your point about marketing and advertising being separate, but I get confused (it's not difficult), so my post will probably mention both.

This is my views on your options:

Option 1 - bulk lister. This would be of benefit to new sellers who have a large inventory on other sites as they would be hesitant to list individually. If it brings in new sellers with different stock (we have a gap in the market for computer games CDs DVDs etc - I often find no results when looking for a fairly new release) that would be a benefit. I have used the excel spreadsheet and after a couple of mistakes, I find it OK to use. Improvements would be good, but not with our £2000 marketing challenge.

Option 2 - Radio ads - unless you are doing a big campaign with a recognisable jingle which will drum itself in to everyone, then probably not worth doing.

Option 3 - Newspapers - as above, plus we can make use of the PR company in thinking up 'interesting' stories, like the other side does and get news stories printed free. eg someone auctioning the diamond that they had made out of their grandmother's ashes .

Option 4 - Flyers - I think these will be very effective for little cost as most sellers intend putting them in their ebay parcels etc and handing out at boot fairs.

Option 5 - RSS Feed - need I say more - WE'VE GOT TO HAVE IT NOW! (but can we also have our £2 challenge please )

Option 6 - handing out merchandise eg cotton shopper bags, mugs etc. If I ever get given a freebie at the train station, I always look up the website to see what it is about. Haven't got enough budget to give away merchandise at the mainline stations, though.

A lot of charities hold Christmas Fayres. Could send out goody bags to put on their tombolas. Might be able to get a bit of publicity in the press for this giveaway (can I have some for my scholl Christmas Fayre?)

This could also tie in nicely with the hospice idea. For each hospice who signs up, eBid could list some of its merchandise for auction.

Option 7 - Making an advert - too expensive for TV, but a viral ad series on Youtube wouldn't cost much, if anything. Anyone good at movie making out there? Could do spoofs of the popular ones like the bouncy ball advert (was it for Sony Bravia?), or a series, like the 'Gold Blend' ads with Gazza/Mark instead (Is there really a Gazza AND a Mark?)

Option 8 - Sponsorship - cost a few hundred pounds to sponsor a kid's football team and you get the logo on their kit. Could get a few stories in the local press from it.

Sponsorhip in a lot of cases has a good 'community' feel if you are sponsoring good causes.


I haven't been able to put my ideas as clearly as Graham, but I hope there are a few useful thoughts there.

I hope that Gazza/Mark have offered up the challenge in a light-hearted way, rather than an 'at the end of their tether' of everyone moaning way - I'm quite excited about it (does that make me a saddo??), but you are right about - . I am pleased, though, that this thread has received only constructive ideas and has not been hijacked by moaners!

I especially like the RSS Feed and the making an advert with G&M idea (especially because Gazza's good looks are a selling point!!) Also because we could get a lot of continuous mileage out of these ideas and they're a form of viral marketing.

Another idea - how about a competition? New sign-ups to Ebid or new sign-ups to EBid's newsletter are put into a competition to win £1000, £500 and other smaller prizes. And if they forward the news of the competition to say, five friends, the forwarder gets an extra entry into the prize draw.
The competition could then be advertised on competition websites or in magazines or sent out as news by sellers, or anywhere really.

OR - if the two ideas are combined, how about a competition to make a short advert for Ebid? And the prize money is £2000. Great opportunity to get the word out in many different circles.

[ToyCrazyUK]

I'm always up for a competition! If the prizes can be dished out in time for Christmas, even better!

Just spotted your edited bit - I would love an online advert competition - I suggested it a while back and NYK gave some constructive comments eg if people used it to slate eBay, they might sue etc, but now we've got the PR company on board, they should know how we can successfully run it. My son, who's 9, loves making movies and I won the Gazza/MArk puppets on the YDC, so I'm going to get him to make some movies when they arrive.

That made me remember the other option - I've mentioned it previously in the thread, but I thought I should categorise it as an option:

Option 10 - perfiliate schemes - eg buy at, helpmyschool and there at least 1/2 dozen others. Similar to affiliate schemes, but the good cause gets some of the commission. I don't think it costs anything to set up - only if people register. (Don't want to offer commission for people to sign up as buyers as the whole school will register just to get the commission)

(especially because Gazza's good looks are a selling point!!)

- is there a picture of Gazza somewhere??? As we always hear from Gazza and not from Mark, we could make them George Michael/Andrew Ridgley characters!

[Armstrongs]

Mornin Peeps

OK I'm going to put my money where my mouth is and see if I can trial my hospice idea on a smaller scale (ie: 1 hospice). Thinking Nov - Dec.

I'm going in to see our Fundraiser on Tuesday (with YDC48 money) & hopefully we will have a game plan by the time I leave lol

Which hospice merchandise to list
Which benefactors to approach

Posters for the hospice shops
Flyers for the Street Collectors to distribute.
email peeps on the supporters list
Include in the hospice newsletter
etc. etc.

In other words, EVERY means possible but NOT the local press.
I really think that one needs to be kept for a (hopefully) bigger scale initiative.
Talking of which, the Christmas boat has already been well and truly missed for a full scale plan. But that's possibly a good thing because most folk are well and truly "charity fatigued" at Christmastime.

I'm thinking Mothering Sunday next year!
It's a pity about the "no raffles" rule though. But I wonder if G&M could exempt themselves & get a temporary lotteries and amusements licence?
I'm pretty sure a big dealer would supply a car at cost (in return for the associated publicity), with the "profits" being shared equally between the participating hospices.

But, back to the smaller scheme....the only thing I will need from ebid is new sub category for St. Cuthberts.

Be back later with a progress report.

xx

[*artsbanquet*]

I'm always up for a competition! If the prizes can be dished out in time for Christmas, even better!

Just spotted your edited bit - I would love an online advert competition - I suggested it a while back and NYK gave some constructive comments eg if people used it to slate eBay, they might sue etc, but now we've got the PR company on board, they should know how we can successfully run it. My son, who's 9, loves making movies and I won the Gazza/MArk puppets on the YDC, so I'm going to get him to make some movies when they arrive.

That made me remember the other option - I've mentioned it previously in the thread, but I thought I should categorise it as an option:

Option 10 - perfiliate schemes - eg buy at, helpmyschool and there at least 1/2 dozen others. Similar to affiliate schemes, but the good cause gets some of the commission. I don't think it costs anything to set up - only if people register. (Don't want to offer commission for people to sign up as buyers as the whole school will register just to get the commission)

- is there a picture of Gazza somewhere??? As we always hear from Gazza and not from Mark, we could make them George Michael/Andrew Ridgley characters!

The perfiliate scheme sounds good. I don't know much about them though. I love the idea of making movies with the G&M puppets!

Here's a pic of Gazza - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQy5BxF6jrs

He used to have a nice one as his avatar ages ago, but they took it down.

[gazza]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks to everyone taking part in this discussion, I thought I'd put a few points down to help you on your way... This is a challenge out of interest mainly, theres no underlying "told you so" feeling about it, users who tell us to advertise more often don't realise we are already and have been advertising to the full extent of our budget for a few years now. Without knowing the ins and outs of our day to day business it's hard for people to comment and they comment to the best of their knowledge which is all we can ask them to do. People often think we are much larger than we are, this is good in some ways but when people think we are a multi-millions pound multi-national company who are too tight to spend money on TV ads it can be a little frustrating.

Marketing against advertising........ I'd have to say that this challenge was really meant to be for advertising, we're taking £2k from our Google Adwords budget to see if it can be spent any better to obtain more user sign ups.

We have tried many different forms of online advertising as this has given us the best return up until now. We have settled with Google and Yahoo over the past 6 months because they give us the best CPA (cost per acquisition). By acquisition we mean a user signing up to eBid AND verifying their email address by clicking on the email we send when they sign up. Not only this but it is the simplest to manage and does not require a lot of toing and froing to organise. With your help we are hoping to find new ways to promote eBid whilst paying around the same (or less would be better) CPA.

As you might well know by now, we are a tiny company, myself and Mark run the show and we have a couple of people helping us part time with the support desk. We have built eBid from the bottom up over a number of years up with zero investment. We are hoping that with the knowledge of our users we can unearth new ways to promote eBid that we wouldn't have thought of and wouldn't have been able to without the help of our users.

We are working on XML and RSS widgets and also an eBid lister software application so dont worry about them for the moment.

Good Luck...!

Gazza

[Barrattess]

.....back to the 'naked ride thru Lincoln' then....hehe

[ToyCrazyUK]

Make sure you film it and it can be our first viral eBid advert!

Thanks for the update Gazza - it's interesting to find out a bit of background as I've only been here a few months. Great to hear you are working on RSS and XML (whatever that is!).

Astsbanquet - thanks for the youtube video! Could do an advert where Gazza takes the site down for maintenance and then has a diet coke break!

It still hasn't sunk in what counts as marketing and what counts as advertising. If I list all the options we have (I'll exclude bulk lister and RSS), Graham, can you point out which are marketing and which are advertising ( I hope everyone else doesn't think I'm thick for asking!!) - some of them are obvious by the name, but I thought it best to list them all anyway)

Option 2 - Radio Ads
Option 3 - Advert in National Newspaper
Option 4 - Distribute Flyers
Option 6 - Merchandise giveaways
Option 7 - Viral Ads
Option 8 - Sponsorship
Option 9 - Word of Mouth
Option 10 - Perfiliate Schemes (and Affiliate)
Option 11 - Charity auction promotions
Option 12 - Competitions

Some of these can overlap. Personally, I think we can manage all of them except option 2 and 3, and even these, we can use to get free publicity with the right stories.

[HelenAndGraham]

Hi Gazza and thank you for clarifying things about the challenge. With the good news about RSS taking that option out of the equation I can't offer any idea that will produce thousands of 'eBid click thrus' better than the contextual advertising you are already doing. So, for me, the challenge is now over.

Most of the other suggestions being raised - while having merits maybe in the UK or local areas - are very unlikely to work equally well for 'global eBid' users and largely fall under the 'seller marketing' category IMO.

If I may ask, "We are working on XML and RSS widgets". That's a fairly sweeping statement and kind of assumes the feeds are available for display widgets to use?

Are you meaning that the site and listings will shortly be RSS enabled and, once those feeds are available, you will provide some widgets to help eBidders display these feeds elsewhere on the net?

Will the basic RSS feeds be freely available for syndicated use?

Will there be a complimentary affiliate scheme working in tandem with the syndicated feeds? (apart from the current Clixgalore scheme)

Are there any approximate planned introduction dates for RSS yet?

I only ask these questions as, depending on the answers, a fair few iMarketers (including me!) can start preparing if this is going to be an opportunity to share in the future growth and success of eBid via syndicated content.

Graham

[nykmedia]

In response to TCs list;

Radio ads & national newspaper advertising - impossible on a £2,000 budget
Flyers - we have flyers and newsletters already and there simply isn't the man=power to distribute enough of them to have any far reaching effect
Merchandise - already available
Viral ads - good IF you can get them going and don't breach any trademarks or copyrights and avoid libel (in the printed section) and slander (in what is said during the ad)
Sponsorship - good if you can get it at that price and it is seen nationally - difficult on a restricted budget
Affiliate schemes (with RSS) similar to the big auction site - good in the long run if lodged with the right hosting company
Charity promotions - not as easy to involve as you might think, so class this under human interest stories and press releases
Competitions - already suggested and being implemented

Back to the main crux of the question - how could you involve the current eBidders to advertise with a £2,000 budget and enable eBid to compare the results with their current ad-words campaigns?

Turn the whole thing into a cash prize competition for the eBidders and judge it on their verified sign-ups within the month of November. Easy to implement, easy to judge - the buddy points would reflect the success of each advertising campaign.

[HelenAndGraham]

Graham, can you point out which are marketing and which are advertising ( I hope everyone else doesn't think I'm thick for asking!!) - some of them are obvious by the name, but I thought it best to list them all anyway)

Option 2 - Radio Ads
Option 3 - Advert in National Newspaper
Option 4 - Distribute Flyers
Option 6 - Merchandise giveaways
Option 7 - Viral Ads
Option 8 - Sponsorship
Option 9 - Word of Mouth
Option 10 - Perfiliate Schemes (and Affiliate)
Option 11 - Charity auction promotions
Option 12 - Competitions

Some of these can overlap. Personally, I think we can manage all of them except option 2 and 3, and even these, we can use to get free publicity with the right stories.

Aboslutely every activity undetaken by eBid is in some way part of the company marketing. Individual activities that are principally designed to publicise and attract new interest are advertising.

As ever in thing as complex and fluid as a business, there are many blurred edges and overlapping areas.

Graham